


Hogwarts School of Westerosi Magic

by kayeslin



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, but sansa is our main character, pretty much everyone will make an appearance eventually, stark family bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-08-07 14:11:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7717810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayeslin/pseuds/kayeslin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sansa Stark is the first of her siblings to go to Hogwarts. She makes new friends and realizes the importance of her old. And while Westeros (and the Stark family) is still healing from Voldemort's first war, he and his followers prepare for another go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Platform 9 and 3/4

Sansa looked at herself in the mirror and straightened her collar. Then she restraightened it. Then she turned to pick up her small over-the-shoulder bag and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and realized the movement had nudged her collar slightly, so she put her bag over her shoulder and began straightening and smoothing her outfit from under the strap.

Her youngest brother groaned loudly from the doorway.

“You look fine!” Rickon said, “can we just go?”

Sansa would have snapped at him but even she could admit she was being slightly neurotic. She’d gotten up at sunrise that morning to check off her packlist and get dressed and do her hair and everything else she needed to do to make sure that today went perfectly. Then she’d had time to check her bags again and change clothes and braid her hair in three different styles before deciding on this one. She’d been standing in front of the mirror for half an hour already but she wasn’t about to tell Rickon that, for he’d only been tapping his foot impatiently outside the room for a few minutes.

“Yes. Yes, we can go.”

Rickon cheered and ran down the stairs without checking to see if his sister was following.

She was, but much slower in case she ruffled her shirt again.

Hogwarts.

Sansa was going to _Hogwarts_.

She walked slowly down the steps and heard banging from at least three different directions the closer she got. The first she saw was Rickon at the base of the stairs chanting “comeoncomeoncomecomcomeon” while jumping up and down. Just past him she saw her older brothers in Father’s former office. Jon and Robb were floating all of Bran’s things around, arranging it for him before he got home from St. Mungo’s, and they kept bumping the unwieldy furniture together. She couldn’t tell if it was on purpose or not, because while she didn’t think the boys would purposefully destroy their little brother’s things they laughed every time a drawer fell out of the dresser.

The third source was Father and Uncle Benjen struggling to maneuver Sansa’s trunk through the door.

It was really happening. Hogwarts. She was going. She was leaving her family for a whole half a year, wouldn’t see any of them until the next Solstice, with only letters to keep them connected. With a family as big and close as theirs it was a daunting thought so she did her best to push it away and focus on saying her goodbyes.

“Well stop goofing off and give me a hug,” she told her older brothers. They set down Bran’s things and swooped in to give her a hug.

“We’ll miss you, Sanswich,” Robb said on her left.

“Be good and write us every day,” Jon said on her right.

She had one arm around each of their shoulders, both of theirs wrapped firmly around her waist, the rest of her squished between them while her feet hung a few inches off the ground. They had hugged like this as far back as she could remember; the Sanswich.

“I’ll miss you, too,” she mumbled into their shoulders.

They set her down and she turned to see Arya right behind her. Her arms were crossed and she was facing away. Sansa prepared herself for another argument about how Arya didn’t think Sansa should go away but before she could get a word out Arya had her arms around her in a loose hug. Sansa didn’t say anything but she could hear the boys behind them cooing and soon enough they joined the hug as well.

Rickon, never one to be left out, ran up to tackle them all and Sansa knew she would have fallen down if they weren’t all holding each other up.

She heard Uncle Benjen laughing from the doorway, back from putting the last of her things in his truck.

“Stay just like that I need to take a picture,” he said, getting his phone out.

“No, stop,” Arya said, suddenly wiggling as hard as she could, but Robb and Jon were strong and refused to let go. “Jon let go I don’t want to be in a picture!”

The rest of them all laughed as they came out of their group hug, and Sansa left the house to get in the passenger seat of Uncle Benjen’s truck. Rickon followed after and climbing over her to sit in the middle. She tried not to notice that her pristine collar was most definitely rumpled.

Her father got in the driver’s seat, waved to the kids he would see in a few hours, and pulled away from the house.

She watched Uncle Benjen wave from the porch in the rear view mirror until the car was too far away to see him anymore.

The drive to the Wintertown train station was short, and soon enough Rickon was jumping out to run ahead and grab them all a trolley for her things.

She’d meet kids from all over the North on her train. It would stop at the Crossroads to add cars from the Vale and the Riverlands, then Kings Landing to add cars from the Westerlands and the Stormlands, and then it would stop at Highgarden to add the final cars from the Reach and Dorne. And then the long combined train would make it to the opposite corner of the country, to Hogwarts. Sansa would be spending the next seven years farther south than she’d ever been before. Actually, she’d never been past the Barrowlands, so she’d probably be farther south than that before lunch!

As she and Father piled all of her things into an empty train compartment she wished her mother was there. She’d said goodbye to her and Bran the day before, and it had been warm and comforting even though they were watched by all the healers in the hall outside Bran’s room. Still, she wished she could do it all again in the train station.

Without her mother, the best goodbye she could hope for was her father holding her close and Rickon not squirming away to try and find something more fun to do.

Sansa sat alone in her compartment waiting for more students to file in and wished she hadn’t been so adamant about leaving early. Then the door opened.

“Hi, I’m Jeyne. Can I sit with you?”

Sansa smiled.

“Of course!” she said. “I’m Sansa.”


	2. 2nd Year

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa loves her brother Bran, but the world is hardly ever fair to him.

Looking back on it, the summer before Sansa’s first year was “some sort of eternal nightmare where everything that can possibly go wrong went wrong and no one got a godsbedamned break and it would have been less miserable to literally fling ourselves into a volcano.” According to Arya. Jon, always sparse with words, and Robb, always so eloquent, simply called it “the shit months.”

It had started alright enough; the worst that really happened was that Robb had made friends with a student at the local university that Jon didn’t like, leading to the first actual fight the two had ever had. When Sansa’s Hogwarts letter arrived everyone forgot about Theon Greyjoy causing the first ever discord between Jon and Robb.

Then Bran had stumbled upon a cursed trinket in their house that no one even knew where it had come from and was blown out the window and into a coma that lasted the better part of two weeks.

Then their Grandfather was admitted into the hospital, with no one expecting him to last more than a month.

Then their parents went the way of Jon and Robb and had the first fight any of the kids could remember. Mother wanted Father to use magic to heal her father, or at least admit him to St. Mungo’s, but he said he couldn’t do the former and _wouldn’t_ do the latter. It was against the rules of the Statute of Secrecy, he’d told her, which was true but a grieving daughter doesn’t want to hear anything about international wizard law.

Then when Bran finally woke up the healers told him he’d never walk again.

The multiple stressers put all the more strain on Jon and Robb’s friendship and caused the already tempestuous relationship between Arya and Sansa to blow up further. Sansa found herself yelling at Arya for things she'd never minded before, like listing to music in the living room or texting on her phone during dinner. Arya meanwhile started fighting _extra_ dirty with her sister, declaring to anyone who would listen that Sansa was a traitor to her family for leaving for _stupid Hogwarts_ but they were better off without her anyway because she made everything worse anyway. Poor Rickon, worried about his brother and his Grandfather and surrounded by fighting everywhere he went, began acting out. He’d always been a bit of a wild child but that summer was when he stopped listening to anyone and started destroying anything he could get his hands on.

For most of that summer there hadn't been a room in the house you could go without hearing at least one person screaming.

As scared as she'd been to leave home, and she had been, it was such a relief to _leave_. The family had tried to valiantly to put on a brave face for her last day, to pretend they weren't falling apart, but it had, in the end, just been a day.

And of course none of the misfortune actually ended when Sansa left for Hogwarts. Less than a week after school had started Grandfather died, and when Robb and Theon took Bran out into the Wolfswood to cheer him up he was bitten by a werewolf of all things.

Sansa had nearly dropped out to run away home when she read Robb’s letter, for it had fallen to him to tell her. Mother was with Uncle Edmure and Uncle Brynden while Father wouldn’t leave Bran’s side, and Robb wasn’t actually talking to anyone else in the family because Jon, Arya, and Rickon all blamed him and Theon for Bran and the three of them were apparently _this_ close to running away to live with Jon’s biological father even though Jon _hated_ his biological father. Even through parchment Sansa could see her brother falling apart at home.

She hadn’t dropped out, although she had tried. She’d been found crying out by the Great Lake by the Hufflepuff Quidditch team, her trunk behind her in a small trench gouged from her dragging it through the grass. Cedric Diggory had stayed with her out on the lawn while she sobbed and tried to explain what was going on but she’d been too incoherent for him to understand.

It hadn’t really mattered that she was crying nonsense, he’d stayed with her until she tired herself out and then helped her charm her trunk to float behind them while he led her back to the Hufflepuff dorms. When Filch stopped them to try to give them both detention for doing magic in the halls, Cedric claimed all the blame and wound up getting twice the time for it.

It was seeing him every day after that scrubbing floors and organizing potions supplies that caused her to stay more than anything he’d actually said to try to convince her. She’d only met him once before that day and he’d done so much to help her. How could she leave when he was still serving detention? She’d be the scum of the earth if she did that, but then she’d already felt like scum for leaving her family in such disarray.

So she’d gone to Professor Dumbledore to try to get Cedric released from detention, and decided that once he was free she'd leave the school with more composure than last time.

“It’s not his fault, Professor,” Sansa said, struggling to sound calm, “He had to use the floating charm on my trunk because he couldn’t carry me and it at the same time.”

“Why did he need to carry you, Miss Stark?”

“Well I was crying and couldn’t really see where I was going so he had to lead me around a bit.”

“Why were you crying, Miss Stark?”

“Because my Grandfather died and my brother got bit by a werewolf and I’m stuck here while the rest of my family is falling apart on the other side of the country!”

Her calm had crumbled and she found herself, embarrassingly enough, crying again. Professor Dumbledore had come out from around his desk to pat her awkwardly on the shoulder. 

“I’m very sorry about your Grandfather,” Dumbledore said, “and I hope your brother is alright.”

“He’s devastated,” Sansa had wailed, “there’s so much that’s being taken from him already and now the whole wizarding world is going to hold this against him and he’ll be so lonely and he’s always wanted to come to Hogwarts and now he won’t be able to!”

“Your brother is hardly the only werewolf in the wizarding world, my dear. He certainly won’t be the first werewolf to attend Hogwarts.”

Sansa’s tears had stopped dead and she smiled for the first time in days.

"Really?"

Dumbledore smiled, his eyes shining, and nodded.

"As long as I'm headmaster, my dear, all magical children have a place at this school." Dumbledore went back behind his desk and sat down, picking up a quill as he continued on, "Now about Mister Diggory's actions. It seems to me that helping a younger student in need is worth, perhaps 20 points?"

Cedric’s detention ended that day, which had been her goal, but she thought she’d gotten even more from her visit to the headmaster. She knew Bran’s life wouldn’t be easy (she hadn’t even talked to Dumbledore about Bran’s fall or his trouble adjusting to his wheelchair) but knowing that there was a place for him _there_ at Hogwarts with _her_ made her feel like the world was getting much much better.

 

When Sansa came home for Christmas, Jon and Arya and Rickon still lived at home, Mother and Father had gone back to being each others rock, Arya was back to ignoring Sansa rather than antagonizing her, and Rickon stopped intentionally breaking things just to make more noise than everyone else. Jon and Robb had made up and Sansa couldn’t see any change in their relationship other than they studied more in order to become animagi so they could spend full moons with Bran.

And a year later, when Sansa realized that the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor was himself a werewolf, she felt even more optimistic about her brother’s future.

She'd spent most of her second year ambivalent about kind and quiet Professor Lupin. He wasn't as handsome as Professor Lockhart, and she had to work much harder in his class which wasn't fun. There was something about him that made her feel calm and at ease in his class though, and she certainly liked the material more. Sansa hadn't appreciated just how much she liked Professor Lupin until Professor Snape filled in. Snape wasn't terrible to her class like he was to some, but his skulking around desks put her on edge in classes and his standards were near impossible to reach.

The fact that he'd demanded they shift their focus to werewolves when they hadn't been studying them at all had been annoying as a student, as a sister to Bran, it was painful to have to listen to her classmates talk so clinically about werewolves.

"The transformation starts with the wizard's bones, growing and eventually snapping to move into the canine shape. The muscles will come after, pulling taught and occasionally causing seizures, then the skin, which often tears itself," Snape told their class, and for once he didn't mind the students vocally reacting to his lecture as they all started making disgusted sounds. Sansa herself thought she might be sick, but for a very different reason than Colin Creevey was.

"In their human form, werewolves often have scars both from the grotesque nature of their monthly transformations and from injuries during their time as a wolf." He smirked here, and Sansa felt her stomach turn. "Wizards don't keep their minds when they become wolves, so they often pick fights with other animals in the woods or even turn to self-injury. You can always tell a werewolf by looking at their human face."

The students around her took that last bit of advice to heart, all of them writing furiously in their notes. Sansa saw her roommate Morag shudder. Sansa shakily raised her hand.

"Professor I need to use the restroom," she said before Snape could actually call on her. And then she stood and left the classroom without waiting for his reply. As the door shut behind her she heard him yell about deducting points for her rudeness, but she was too focused on _leaving that horrible room_ to care.

Instead of going to the bathrooms, where she worried another student could walk in and find her, she went to a hallway she knew didn't have any used classrooms and collapsed on the floor. Her breathing was erratic and she could feel tears burning her eyes but she willed them away.

_They're not talking about Bran_ she said to herself. _They don't know what they're talking about, but they're not talking about Bran. Bran is fine_ _. It may have been a full moon last night but he's fine he's fine he's fine he's-_

"Miss Stark are you alright?"

Sansa's head jerked up to see Professor Lupin above her. She was surprised to see him, being that the whole reason she was in this mess was because he'd asked Professor Snape to substitute for him. Before she got too judgemental about him playing hooky though she took note that he looked terrible.

"I'm fine, Professor," she said as she shakily rose to her feet. "What are you doing here?"

"This is the door to the teacher's quarters," Lupin said pointing to the door she was leaning against. "What are you doing in this hallway, shouldn't you be in my class?" He smiled wryly, it pulled a scar on his mouth in a way that made its existence all the more obvious. In fact as pale as he was Sansa could see a lot more scars than she'd realized on his face.

She froze as her mind made a connection she could never actually be sure about.

Or maybe she could be sure, because she wanted to be sure. For Bran, she wanted to be sure.

"I...Professor Snape was lecturing about werewolves," she said, and took careful note of Professor Lupin's facial expression. His eyes narrowed for half a second, but that could have been surprise that Snape was lecturing about something so different than the lessons Lupin had planned.

"But I couldn't handle the lesson. It...my brother...my brother is a werewolf, you see, and I didn't like listening to everyone talk about his condition so...so coldly."

"Of course you wouldn't," Lupid said quietly. His face was far more open than when she started talking. His teasing smile was gone and in its place was a look of pure empathy. "I'm sorry you had to go through that. I'll talk to Professor Snape about the change in my lesson-plan, I had hoped to be the one to teach everyone about werewolves."

"Would you have taught it any differently?"

Lupin smiled again, but it was smaller and his eyes seemed far away from their conversation.

"Yes I should say I would. I have a lot of," he paused here and looked intensely at Sansa, but she was staring just as intensely at him, "personal experience."

Sansa smiled brightly at him, and couldn't wait for next month when she'd get to go home and tell Bran about the best professor at Hogwarts.

 

Of course then Snape told the rest of the students and all their parents, and Professor Lupin was fired. Sansa hadn’t felt that hopeless since that day in front of the Great Lake.

“It’s not fair, Professor!” She stormed into Professor Lupin’s office without any warning. She had talked to him just after Solstice — she had _told him_ what an inspiration he was for her younger brother. She had told _Dumbledore_ , and here they still were. Lupin fired and Sansa’s hopes for Bran’s future completely dashed.

Professor Lupin was packing his things, all those wonderful magical creatures he’d collected and taught them about, all being locked away.

“I know, Sansa. Life rarely is.”

“You’re the best professor here, Professor. The absolute best, smartest, kindest—we won’t learn anything without you!”

“Now I doubt Professor Sprout would be happy to hear one of her own students say such things.” He tried to smile, bless him he tried but his face was tired and scarred and he didn’t look anything like Bran but that’s all she saw. Her little brother sad and old and never allowed to do things he was perfect at.

“You’re,” she cried, “the best.”

Professor Lupin came over to sit on the desk nearest Sansa and gestured for her to take the seat opposite him. She did and he held out his hands for her to hold, which she also did. She sat there in that chair silently crying while he held her hands for a few moments before he spoke.

“You’re a remarkable young girl, Sansa Stark. You’re a wonderful sister and even not knowing him, I know your brother is lucky to have you. You’re also a fantastic student. In the unlikely case that Hogwarts never finds a teacher to match me, you’ll _still_ excel in this class and every other one, because you have a brilliant mind.” Lupin squeezed her hands comfortingly and she let out another little whine as she cried.

“We’re going backwards,” she’d wailed.

“What do you mean, Sansa?”

“It’s all backwards! There are hundreds of werewolves in my family’s history! We used to be all werewolves, a pack, my father said, and we were witches and wizards and _werewolves_. They say Bran the Builder was a werewolf. He was the King in the North and he was a werewolf and now thousands of years later you’re being fired for being a werewolf even though you’re the best professor we’ll ever have.”

“History isn’t a straight line from bad to better, Sansa. And you’re right, it’s not fair. The best we can do is remember that history, to learn from it. Whether it’s better than we have now or worse, we have to learn from it and use that knowledge to look forward.” Lupin stood up, releasing Sansa’s hands as he did to walk to his desk.

“What do you want out of our world, Sansa? Whatever it is, just do your best to make it a reality and I’m sure we’ll get there. If your Bran wants to come to Hogwarts in a few years, then by the Seven, Sansa, you get him here. And maybe when he grows up he can come back and teach.”

Sansa nodded sternly, tears drying on her cheeks.

“Here,” Lupin said, handing her a book, “this is, well don’t laugh but this is my journal. My special, once a month journal. It could help your brother.”

She took it and held it gently to her chest.

“Thank you, Professor,” she said quietly.

“It’s been an absolute pleasure, Sansa. I know I’ll hear your name in the future, and I hope to meet your brother one day.”


	3. 3rd Year, pt I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Stark's have a rocky relationship with Hogwarts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shorter bit hinting at things to come

“Hi Sansa, hi Jeyne.” Ginny Weasley said as she opened the door into their train compartment, Luna Lovegood trailing behind her.

“Hi Ginny, hi Luna,” Sansa and Jeyne said. The girls never seemed to be able to keep up their friendship in the school year, when being in different houses kept them apart, but once the Hogwarts Express stopped at the Crossroads to add cars from the Vale and the Riverlands, the four girls liked move around on the train to share a compartment and feel like some great inter-house best friend group (even if they didn’t have a Slytherin and Sansa and Jeyne double represented Hufflepuff).

“Were either of you at the World Cup this year?” Ginny asked.

“Which World Cup?” Jeyne asked.

“The one for Quidditch,” Sansa answered, “No, but I heard what happened. You were there weren’t you? I’m glad you’re okay.”

“What happened?” Sansa always forgot Jeyne was a muggleborn but Ginny answered before she could clear things up for her friend.

“It was attacked by Death Eaters,” the other redhead said. Jeyne gasped. From the first time she’d heard about Death Eaters she’d been terrified by the very concept. Sansa reached for her hand and held it.

“It was just a fluke,” Sansa reassured her friend, “just old men too drunk and excited to contain themselves.”

“Yes, my dad says crowds make people stupid and want to relive the glory days of times long since gone,” Luna said, holding on to Jeyne’s other hand. They all almost fell out of their seats as the train finally started moving again. They laughed as they rearranged themselves on their seats and talked about their summers.

Ginny always had countless stories about her brothers and the competitive side of Sansa always had to try to find some story involving _her_ brothers that outdid her. Then Ginny’s competitive side would kick in, and the two would just be telling more and more outrageous stories while Luna and Jeyne laughed at both of them.

Ginny had just finished a hilarious story about Fred and George levitating all of Percy’s things into a pond when she turned and stopped Sansa from retaliating with a story of Robb and Jon trying to hitchhike their way to White Harbor but getting lost and winding up in the Bay of Seals. They didn’t realize their mix up until they started swimming in water far colder than it should have been and they bumped into some seals. Robb swears that Jon almost lost his hand to one and had to wrestle for his life.

“Isn’t your sister a first year this year?” Ginny asked laughing. “Did you make her sit in another compartment?”

“Oh,” Sansa paused, wondering how either Ginny or Luna would react to the news. Jeyne knew of course, but Jeyne lived so close to Sansa they got to stay friends even in the summer.

“She decided not to come,” Sansa said quickly, “she didn’t want to go to boarding school.”

“But she’s a witch isn’t she? She’s done all sorts of accidental magic before?” Ginny looked confused, and why not. She and Luna were purebloods, they’d probably never even heard of a witch not going to magic school.

“She is, but she’ll just be homeschooled by my father and uncle.”

“You can’t do that, can you?” Ginny asked.

“My brothers do it. Actually that was probably another reason; Arya always wants to do everything Jon and Robb do. One time—“

“I always just assumed your older brothers were squibs!” Luna interrupted. Ginny nodded along. “They turned down Hogwarts to study at home?”

Sansa paused. She knew her family was a little odd by magical standards, but she didn’t realize how odd until now.

“No,” she said, “they’re both wizards. They go to the muggle secondary school in Wintertown during the day and then read magical text books when they get home and practice spells with Father. They had to go to the Ministry last year to take their OWLs but they both passed every subject.”

“But,” Ginny paused for a long time here, trying to say whatever she wanted to tactfully. In the end she just went with, “Why?”

For years Sansa had never given much thought into why Robb and Jon declined their Hogwarts invitation letters. No one in the family even knew they did it until weeks after the letters had come and Mother had asked when they wanted to go shopping.

“Whenever,” Jon had said casually, spooning oatmeal in his mouth.

“We can probably wait until after September, that way there might be sales on the books and stuff,” Robb had said, Jon nodding along even though his mouth was full.

“That’d be clever if it didn’t mean you wouldn’t have your books for the first day of class,” Father had said.

“Oh,” Robb had said, “we forgot to tell you. We’re not going to Hogwarts. Don’t worry, we already wrote to back to Professor McGonagall.”

“Are you sure,” Mother had asked. Father was just silently staring between them both. “You know if you stay I’m making sure you both go to college.”

Robb and Jon looked briefly at each other and frowned a bit as though the thought that their muggle mother would keep them in muggle school had never occurred to them before.

“I guess that’s fair,” Robb had said glumly, “but we can’t do any after school clubs because we want to have time to study magic.”

It was as easy as that. Sansa and Bran had been a little confused, as eager as they both were to go to Hogwarts, but Father hadn’t questioned it at all and when he’d heard the news the next day Uncle Benjen had immediately offered to help train them both when Father was busy at work.

Sansa hadn’t thought more on the subject until years later, when she was a first year standing in the Great Hall waiting to be sorted. She’d looked out into the crowd and saw two pale blond heads and suddenly thought of one really good reason Jon and Robb might want to avoid the castle.

She never confronted either of them about it, though, and she certainly wasn’t about to tell Ginny or Luna or even Jeyne about it.

“They liked their school and their friends,” Sansa finally answered.

“And now your sister’s decided not to come. Do you think your younger brothers will homeschool as well?”

“Um.” Sansa hesitated. She was the only Stark at Hogwarts, and typically that meant she was only ever Sansa Stark to her classmates, not Robb’s Little Sister or Arya’s Big Sister or even Ned’s Daughter. She loved sharing stories about her family, but suddenly having to answer for their actions wasn’t fun. What was fun was getting to recreate her life however she wanted without anyone around to ask about the more serious and complicated parts of her family.

That wasn’t entirely fair of course. She loved her family as a whole and every member within it. She’d always accepted their history, as sordid as some of the details where, and even been proud of some of the scandals. But Hogwarts was one of the few places where no one knew of those scandals. It wasn't Riverrun where all their distant relations gossiped about shotgun weddings, or St. Mungo's where it seemed every maester commented on the way every Stark had ever died. Even at home in Wintertown where everyone knew the skeletons in their closet but didn't judge, she hadn’t realized the weight put on her shoulders of so many strangers knowing so many intimate details about their lives.

To Sansa, her family was perfect, and that was the front she put forth to everyone she knew at school. She didn’t want to talk about her father’s ongoing struggle with Professor Dumbledore to make the school wheelchair accessible for Bran, or Rickon’s growing behavioral problems casting doubt on him being able to go to Hogwarts even if he did suddenly show the magic to be invited. Or the fact that their Uncle Benjen had technically started the trend of forgoing Hogwarts when he’d dropped out before he finished his fourth year.

 “Bran’s still not sure,” she said simply, “and who knows if Rickon even has magic, it’s so hard to see accidental magic sometimes in a house full of wizards.”

Luna opened her mouth to ask something but Sansa was tired of talking about her family like this so she changed the subject.

“Why one time Robb and Jon were outside trying to mow the lawn with a charm!”

Sansa told her story and her friends laughed at it and she knew that they’d likely forget about her family’s unusual dislike for what most witches and wizards considered the greatest place in the world.


	4. 3rd Year, pt II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hogwarts rallies behind Sansa

By the end of her third year Sansa had gotten her first kiss and her first black eye. The latter had never been a milestone she actually wanted to achieve, made all the worse that it was done by the same person who did the former.

They had been in Old Town for the day, holding hands and meandering around the shops. They were arguing of course; they had been arguing all week. And then two weeks before that. And four weeks before that. It seemed as though every other week Joffrey Baratheon would pick a fight with Sansa over something trivial like “Why are we always hanging out with your friends? I feel like I’m babysitting all the time,” or “Stop studying so much I never see you anymore are you my girlfriend or my librarian,” and the most recent fight “You look like an old maid when you wear your hair like that are you trying to make us both look like fools?”

But still they were holding hands, tight and clammy and squeezing uncomfortably whenever one of them tried to go into a store the other didn’t want to go into.

Couples squabble all the time, Sansa told herself. At least they did at the beginning and then they’d realized it was all just romantic tension and they were really in love the whole time and then they lived happily ever after. True she was basing that philosophy mostly on romantic comedies set before the couple got together whereas she and Joffrey had been dating for months now, but they always say Hollywood lies, right?

Afterwards she wouldn’t even remember what she’d said that set him off screaming at her. Maybe he wanted to go into the Three Broomsticks and she said no? Or maybe she’d tried to go into Dominic Maestro’s without asking him? Whatever it was, suddenly Joffrey was clutching her hand tighter than ever, so hard his nails were digging into her flesh, and she had to dig her own nails into his wrist to get him to let her go. Her nails were longer, and she’d accidentally torn his skin a bit. Then he’d reeled back and punched her in the face, calling her “an ugly nagging baby who was terrible at kissing.” That part she remembered very clearly. Later she’d laugh at the insult, thinking how weak it was, but at the time and the days after the fact, it hurt as bad as the punch had.

Sansa had never been punched before, even with five rowdy siblings, so she’d fallen like an empty sack on the ground holding her face and crying. She heard people scream and a commotion, and when she’d looked up her blurry vision had made it seem like her brothers were there holding Joffrey down. As she blinked away her tears and thought of course it wasn’t her brothers her brothers were at Winterfell, she saw it was actually the Weasley twins. Gentle arms helped her stand up and stagger her way back to the castle and up to the hospital wing.

She had never visited it before and wasn’t entirely looking forward to it even as horrid as she felt, but she was shaking so bad she couldn’t actually voice any objections. So she’d found herself sitting on a bed while Madame Pomfrey fretted over her and put something sticky all over her eye. As her bruise healed over before it could really start to form, all Sansa could wonder was _how long as has Madame Pomfrey worked here was she thinking of the last Stark girl to show up to the hospital wing because she dated the wrong boy?_

Sansa knew that wasn’t a fair comparison at all, least of all because Joffrey had seemed the perfect boy. He was in Gryffindor, he should have been gallant and brave and kind. Instead he was petty and jealous and controlling. He was the son of an old friend of her father’s, he should have been comforting and familiar. Instead he was cold and unsympathetic. She had tried so hard to make herself love him and she had succeeded she loved him _so much_ and this is what he did to her.

When she was finally released from the hospital wing, with many hugs from Madame Pomfrey and promises to come to her for anything and she meant _anything_ , Sansa was shocked by just how many people were waiting for her in the hall. Sansa spent her first two years cultivating a strong reputation at Hogwarts, but dating Joffrey had consumed her so much she’d honestly forgotten that she had actual friends. He’d forced her to stop talking to so many people, but here they all were for her still.

Ginny and Ron and Fred and George Weasley were right at the head of the group, soon pushed out of the way by Jeyne Poole who immediately gave her a giant hug. Luna Lovegood seemed to appear out of nowhere to hold her hand while she walked down the hall toward the Great Hall, offering a small smile and silent support. Trystane Martell was shouting promises to cut off Joffrey’s head if she wanted. The big group turned a corner and saw Myrcella Baratheon pacing back and forth apparently arguing with herself. When she saw them all she flushed and held out a card while stuttering all sorts of apologies on behalf of her “stupid no good evil pig of a brother.”

The whole school knew what happened apparently, and Sansa was torn between feeling warm and loved and being _mortified_. Even the visiting Beauxbatons and Durmstang students seemed at least peripherally aware that some boy had hit his girlfriend. Their eyes were more curious and judgment than any of her real schoolmates, but she’d still gotten hugs from a few Essosi girls she didn’t know.

Sansa couldn’t go anywhere that whole next week without at least four people joining her, always surrounding her like a bubble. She could hardly ever see where she was going, because Morag Meadows liked to walk in front of her and walk backwards to talk while they went from classroom to classroom. Jeyne was ever-present at her side, holding her hand and glaring fiercely at any boy who wasn’t in their house who got too close.

On their way from the greenhouses one day she heard shouting by the lake, but the large group of over-protective girls surrounding her stopped her from actually seeing what was going on. She tried to look around Morag’s head but Margaery Tyrell quickly grabbed Sansa’s head.

“I just love your hair, Sansa!” said the older Slytherin girl. Margaery wasn’t even one of Sansa’s friends from before Joffrey isolated her from her friends, but since ‘ _the incident_ ’ she’d introduced herself and taken a point position in Sansa’s friend-shield.

“Thank you,” Sansa said, trying to turn her head without pulling out all her hair out, “but don’t you guys hear that? What’s happening?”

“Nothing,” Margaery said and behind them both Jeyne stepped up beside Morag to make a wall that Sansa couldn’t crane her neck around.

“Give me my damn wand!”

That was Joffrey’s voice. Sansa stopped her struggling against her friends. Part of the friend-wall’s self-appointed job was keeping Sansa from ever seeing Joffrey. Despite living in the same castle, Sansa hadn’t laid eyes on him since Old Town.

“What…what’s going on?” Sansa asked, turning to Margaery.

Margaery sighed and smiled indulgently.

“My housemates are just playing a little prank on Joffrey. Really, Sansa, it’s fine.”

Sansa glared at Jeyne and Morag. Morag looked back nervously, but Jeyne and Margaery were looking at each other.

“Frankly I think you should enjoy this, Sansa,” Jeyne said finally, stepping aside so Sansa could finally see the commotion at the lake.

A group of Slytherins were standing around Joffrey stopping him from getting too close to Draco Malfoy, who was holding Joffrey’s bag and _his wand_. Sansa could see bits of parchment and some quills floating in the lake.

“It’s just a bit of fun,” Margaery said easily. Sansa’s mouth was hanging open, unsure if she should call out to stop it or, as Jeyne suggested, just sit back and enjoy it.

“Why are they doing that?” Sansa asked quietly, deciding she shouldn’t draw too much attention to herself until she’d figured out what to do next.

“Gryffindors and Slytherins hate each other,” Jeyne shrugged.

“Joffrey’s never bought into that feud,” Sansa said. Joffrey had family in Slytherin.

“Between us girls,” Margaery said, “Draco has a bit of a crush on Sansa. I guess he wanted to be a knight in shining armor. What do you think, Sansa? Ready to get back on the broom?”

Morag and Margaery giggled but Sansa just flushed.

“Oh shut it Margaery,” Jeyne said while she grabbed Sansa’s arm. “Sansa’s not replacing one spoiled brute with another.”

Morag gasped and looked at Margaery like she would be insulted on behalf of her housemate, but Margaery just laughed louder. Sansa turned and began walking toward the castle before Margaery’s laughter could draw the attention of the boys across the way.

That night she actively sought out Joffrey for the first time since he hit her. Not to talk of course, but she just wanted to look at him. She found that as soon as he made it to the Gryffindor table that every hole sealed up before he could sit down. He was forced to grab food over other student’s shoulders and then he left the hall. He looked furious, but not surprised. When Sansa looked back to the Gryffindor table she saw Ginny looking directly at her and smiling widely. Sansa smiled back, and Ginny winked dramatically.

-

It wasn't long before it was the end of the year.

She'd been bouncing up and down the whole train ride, too eager to see her family to listen to Jeyne and Ginny and Luna and Margaery (finally a Slytherin to complete their set) talk about their plans for break (or their worries about the fallout from the Triwizard Tournament).

Joffrey had convinced her to go home with him for Solstice so she hadn't seen her family since the start of the year. All she wanted was to be in the middle of a Sanswich again, and hold Rickon in her arms as he sleepily told her he was a big kid and didn’t need naps in his sister’s arms anymore even as he fell asleep. She wanted to solve crossword puzzles with Bran and fight with Arya and more than anything she wanted to cry into her Mother’s arms about what an absolute disaster her first love had turned out to be.

She knew her family missed her too, that they’d been worried sick ever since they got the letter explaining what Joffrey had done, but she still wasn’t expecting to see them all in the Wintertown train station waiting for her.

She got to do everything she wanted with her family in her first day home. Everything but fight with Arya, which was fine because she hadn’t _actually_ wanted to _fight_ with her sister.

Their whole lives Sansa had only ever purposefully picked a fight with her once. Or twice. Four times tops. Even still they had never gone a whole week without even a minor verbal skirmish. A month into break Sansa finally realized that they had reached a new record, partially because although they were living in the same house again the two girls hadn’t spoken a single word to each other since she’d been home.

So maybe Sansa sought out a fight, just to make sure Arya was still Arya and not some Death Eater taking polyjuice potion. You can never be too careful.

“I didn’t realize they had supplementary school for homeschool kids,” Sansa said waspishly when she walked in on Arya reading a potions book in their home library. Arya froze and glared at her over her book but didn’t say anything.

“You really should just stop trying to catch up to Jon and Robb,” Sansa tried, for Arya was always sensitive about not being the same classes as her favorite brothers, “if you keep hanging off their coattails you’ll pull them down and they’ll resent you. Just be a little sister, not a bother.”

Arya’s grip on her book tightened but she didn’t even look at Sansa this time.

“Well at Hogwarts—“

“How do your grades work?” Arya interrupted. Sansa was so relieved to hear her sister’s voice at all that she didn’t mind it wasn’t what she was trying for.

“What?”

“How do grades work at Hogwarts? Do they actually hold students back who fail classes? Or if you’re advanced enough could you move forward?”

“Well I know they hold students back, but I’ve never met anyone who’s moved forward. There’s a rumor that they gave Hermione Granger a time-turner last year though so she could take more classes…”

“What are the room assignments like? It’s just by house right? No separation within that?”

“Just house and gender. Arya why do you care? You hate Hogwarts—“

“Hufflepuffs are just loyal right? That’s their thing?” Sansa didn’t answer that time but Arya moved on anyway. “I’m loyal right? Yeah I’m definitely loyal….”

“Arya are you planning on coming to Hogwarts?”

Arya flushed bright red. Sansa forgot her earlier plan to make her sister fight her and smiled brightly.

“Oh I knew I could win you over! All we have to do is write Professor Dumbledore and I’m sure he’ll let you join late. It’s great, Arya really, you’ll have so much fun with all the other students. And don’t worry about what house you get sorted into they’re all great—“

“I need to be in Hufflepuff.”

Sansa smiled, feeling pride. Arya finally wanted to be like _her_. _She_ was the big sister Arya was trying to emulate.

“Well that’s very flattering, Arya, but don’t put too much pressure on yourself.”

“How’s it flattering?” Arya nearly spit out the word, and she was wearing a familiar scowl. And just when Sansa was happy to not fight. She sighed and prepared herself, but still wound up blindsighted. “I just need to stay on you so you don’t wind up in any more trouble you don’t know how to get out of.”

It was perhaps the most insulting way anyone had ever shown concern for Sansa in her whole life.

“Excuse me??” Sansa said, her voice too high.

“You couldn’t even bother to throw a hex back! You clearly need a bodyguard to keep you from dying down there!”

Sansa inhaled sharply. She felt that sting of losing a friend but even more than that…she looked around, noticing that Arya did too. If Father had heard that little snipe of hers, or worse, _Jon_ —

“I’m not going to die at Hogwarts,” Sansa whispered fiercely. “And for your information I had plenty of friends there who were looking out for me. They kept Joff away after it happened and supported me when I just wanted to cry all day long. I don’t need a bodyguard, especially not my bratty little sister.”

“Did any of them punch him back?”

“No.” They hadn’t had to. As soon as Joffrey realized he’d hit her in front of half the school he’d tried to run and was restrained by Fred and George. They’d dragged him a bit roughly to Professor McGonagall, and she’d given him detention for the rest of the year and the first part of next year even, but she certainly hadn’t punched him and she didn’t think Fred and George had either.

“Bunch of sissies,” Arya muttered. Louder she said, “Of course not. And you certainly didn’t. I bet you don’t even know how to throw a punch.”

“I don’t need to know how to throw a punch, Arya. I’m a _witch_.”

“Well I am too but you don’t see me being a helpless little nincompoop without my wand.”

“I am _not_ —“

“Stand up.”

“Don’t you tell me what to do, Arya Stark, I’m older than you!”

“Stand up!”

Sansa stood, but not because Arya told her to, she just wanted to be able to tower over the suddenly standing Arya.

“Okay now spread your legs about hips-width apart.”

“Listen you little _demon child_ —“

“Now put your arms up like this.”

Very belatedly Sansa realized what Arya was doing it. Arya took fencing as a kid. As she grew up she asked to take other classes; Bravosi water dancing, boxing, wrestling. She stayed in classes just long enough to beat all her classmates then she’d switch to a new sport. Sansa didn’t know what Arya was taking now, but she realized that her little sister was trying to teach her how to fight.

Again she was overcome with the confusing feelings of being insulted and loved at the same time. Jon was always indulging Arya. She bossed him around and got into fist fights with him (“sparring, Sansa, we’re sparring!”) and he’d always go along to make her happy. And have fun, Sansa knew. Jon and Arya had fun, even when they did things that Jon didn’t like doing when it wasn’t Arya doing it with him. Rickon did much the same for Sansa, reading books together even before he could read and cooking in the kitchen just so he could help her lick the spoons. Even Sansa did the same for Bran, listening him talk for hours about what superheroes he was obsessed with that day, but she’d never really tried to meet Arya haflway.

So Sansa spread her legs more purposefully and put her arms up.

“Did that prat punch you with a whimpy fist like that? Put your thumb on the outside of your hand or you’ll hurt yourself more than you’ll hurt him.”

Sansa and Arya fought the rest of the summer.

 


	5. 3rd Year, pt III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cedric Diggory was handsome, and kind, and brave, and dead.
> 
> Sansa finds herself in the same shoes as her family was in 15 years ago.

Ned Stark was only a few years older than Sansa was now when his girlfriend gave birth to a stillborn girl. It wasn’t a week later that Ashara Dayne killed herself, and barely a month after that, that Uncle Brandon and Grandfather were killed fighting Voldemort. Then Aunt Lyanna had died.

Sansa thinks she spent most of her life taking this all for granted. In less than a year, less than _half a year_ , her father lost a child, a lover, a brother, a father, and a sister. He was eighteen and near everyone he knew and loved was dead. He wasn’t alone in that loss, she knew. The war with Voldemort killed many people. There was a reason that Harry Potter was called the Boy Who Lived, because so many others _hadn’t_.

Her mother was nineteen and pregnant when her fiancé, Father’s brother Brandon, died. Her Uncle Benjen was as old as Sansa was now when he _watched his sister die_. Nearly every adult she knows had people in their life die when they were her age.

And now she was just like them. Seventeen was too young to die and fourteen was too young to know someone who had died. But Cedric Diggory, aged seventeen and her friend, was dead.

Sansa wondered how Harry Potter felt, like she often wondered how Uncle Benjen ever got up in the morning after seeing what he’d seen. She was sitting in the front row of the audience for the third task of the Triwizard Tournament with a big group of other Hufflepuffs eager to see Cedric, _their hero_ , win. Instead they saw his body come back pale and cold and very dead.

-

Cedric was the first person to welcome her to Hufflepuff after she was sorted. He had cleared a big space at the table for all the incoming first years, and he gestured wildly for every student to sit near him. He shook their hands enthusiastically and introduced himself. She was the last Hufflepuff of her year, so she’d sat next to him all night.

They never became especially close, but they had a bond. He was the boy who found her as she was trying to flee Hogwarts after Bran was bit. He was the boy who hauled her in his arms back to their dorms, and then peacefully accepted a two-week detention sentence for floating her luggage behind them. He was the boy who smiled at her every time he saw her even as he served that detention.

Cedric was the boy who, after Joffrey hit her in front of the whole school, offered to write a note to the teacher of any class she didn’t feel like going to that whole week.

They weren’t best friends, but they were friends. And now he was dead.

She wasn’t the only one who was heartbroken, she knew. Cho Chang, Cedric’s girlfriend, was completely inconsolable. Luna had told her that she hadn’t gotten out of bed for anything but going to the bathroom from the last day of the tournament to the day the trains departed.

She especially wasn’t the only Hufflepuff mourning. The whole house had looked up to him. The whole house had _worshiped_ him.

Sansa remembers last year when one of her roommates, Wylla Frey, had gotten close to flunking potions. She’d started skipping classes because Snape scared her so much, and when she was caught it meant extra homework and detention and that only make her even more scared of everything related to potions. Their whole year tried very hard not to turn on Wylla, because as much as Snape was taking out his anger at her on the rest of them, they knew she was genuinely scared.

When Sansa caught Wylla making herself look sick to miss another class (and another detention session), Cedric was the one who stopped Sansa from being the first one to tell Wylla that _couldn’t she see Snape scared all of them?! Her skipping class just meant more work for the rest of them! And he kept taking points away from them and how could she be so selfish?_

Sansa had dropped her bag when she saw Wylla trying to force herself to throw up in their bathroom. She’d taken a breath, ready to really lay into her, when Cedric had appeared out of nowhere.

“Wylla you look really ill! Let me take you to Madame Pomfrey,” he’d said. Sansa had glared over Wylla’s shoulder at Cedric, trying to communicate telepathically that _she didn’t deserve that_.

But Cedric and Wylla had spent the whole day in the hospital wing, a place Sansa was sure not going to go willingly. The rest of the house was steamed, but the next day Wylla went to class without any drama. And sat through it without problem, answering every question either correctly or with another question that helped the lecture continue on track. Cedric met their class in the dungeon, gave Wylla and encouraging hug, and walked her to the library where they spent the evening (and every other evening for the rest of the year) studying ahead in potions.

-

When Harry Potter and Cedric’s body appeared after the final task, Sansa’s eardrums had nearly burst with the power of Wylla’s screams.

Ernie Macmillan was openly sobbing. Zacharias Smith was shaking like a leaf. Leanne Flint had collapsed.

Looking at Harry clutching Cedric’s body, Sansa had been frozen in terror. She couldn’t move, even as the crowd surged around her. She was jostled every which way and she had just let it happen. She would have fallen down if Jeyne hadn’t been clutching her so tightly. She doesn’t even remember walking back to the dorms, but she does remember frantically packing everything she owns with far less care than she’d ever packed anything in her life.

Jeyne and Morag and Wylla were all talking about how scared they were, if Harry was telling the truth about Voldemort ( _He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named_ they all called him _,_ but her father had always called him Voldemort. Sansa thought she understood the fear of his name now, and the need to overcome it). Sansa had ignored them all, she just continued throwing things she wasn’t even sure were hers in her trunk. She was the first person in the train when it was time to leave.

She thought of Jon and Robb, the same age as Cedric and twice as hot-headed. Would they join the war like Uncle Brandon and Grandfather? Would they _die_ like Uncle Brandon and Grandfather? Uncle Brandon was Robb’s biological father, a fact no one in the family commented on too much because it made Father feel awkward, but suddenly all Sansa saw in her mind was Robb following in his father’s footsteps.

Her family had other fears.

-

While Arya’s over-protectiveness led her to want to go to Hogwarts (which she wouldn’t follow through with, Sansa knew) and teach Sansa how to defend herself, Rickon's led him to following Sansa around everywhere she went, asking to play games he hated but Sansa loved and begging for the occasional rudimentary favor. Like fixing his broken toys would make her feel better about her dead friend. 

Robb, opposite of Rickon, kept doing favors for Sansa, as though having her bed made every day would make her less scared of dark wizards. What did help was Jon constantly offering to cook for her. He wasn’t a great cook, but he seemed to always be getting ready to fix something up for himself when he saw Sansa so “hey it’s no problem to make more what are you in the mood for?” (it was a very weak pretense, but it took Sansa over a week to notice that no Jon wasn’t actually _just about to make_ lemon cakes at 11 o’clock at night.)

Bran left her presents. Drawings, flowers, his own comic books – anything he thought Sansa would like, all with little notes like “thinking of you!” Sansa repeatedly pulled him aside to say _Bran we live in the same house why are you leaving me notes instead of just talking to me_. But Bran said he wanted her to take them with her when she went to school the next year.

She would, she promised him, if he helped convince their parents to let her _go_.

“Betrayal!” Bran shouted at Robb, pointing ominously.

“Don’t be melodramatic, Bran.” Robb rolled his eyes, but when he turned for sympathy from Sansa he found her glaring just as hard as Bran at him.

“Your opinion isn’t worth anything here so you might as well just butt out,” Sansa told him. He flushed but didn’t back down.

“Mother tell Sansa I’m right!” said Robb.

“No Mother, tell Robb to mind his own business!” Sansa said.

For her part, their Mother just crossed her arms.

“Robb, Sansa’s schooling isn’t any of your business, especially when you’re so far behind in physics,” Mother said and Sansa smiled smugly, until she continued. “But Sansa, it is _my_ business.”

“But _Mother_!”

“I’m scared, Sansa,” Mother said. Sansa tried to hold her tongue because she wasn’t sure she’d ever heard her mother say those words together before. “I’m not a witch. I’ve never been to Hogwarts, I’ve never met a wizard outside of your Father's family, and I didn’t know who Voldemort was until he was already dead. But I know he killed your Uncle Brandon.” A tear escaped her mother’s eye, and Robb put his arm around their mother’s shoulder.

“I was devastated enough when I thought Brandon had died from a freak accident. And it may have taken years, but when your father finally told me the truth about magic and Voldemort I knew I just…I could _not_ let it or _him_ take anything else away from me. You’re too precious to me, Sansa.”

“I understand, Mother,” Sansa didn’t, but she hoped she sounded convincing. “But Hogwarts is safe. Dumbledore protected students in the last war, he’ll protect us all this year.”

“Not all students,” Jon said darkly from behind Robb. Sansa glared at him.

“ _But_ ,” Mother said imperiously, and Jon looked back down and Sansa held her next argument. “I won’t be your jailer, sweetling. I want you to be safe. I want you to be with me, I want all of my children to be with me. I don’t know if Dumbledore can protect you, if Hogwarts is safe. But Brandon wasn’t safe in his own apartment.”

“We don’t even know if Voldemort is really back, Mother,” Sansa said quietly.

“We don’t,” Mother smiled sadly, and Sansa saw tears in her eyes. “Robb, Jon, I want you to teach Sansa every spell you know. Sansa, I want you to keep training with Arya how to fight with your fists. And I’ll talk to your father about giving you any trinkets he has. Benjen too. If you want to go to Hogwarts, you can go to Hogwarts. But you _will_ be safe. You will be prepared.”


	6. 4th Year, pt I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every family has skeletons in their closets

Sansa didn’t write her family often when she was at school. She always started off strong, writing a letter a day so everyone in her family heard from her individually every week, but by Halloween she was usually too busy with schoolwork or friends to keep going and had ceased writing all letters altogether.

But long after Halloween in her fourth year she found herself writing to her brother Jon.

 _Aegon Targaryen is a bully,_ she wrote, _and Daenerys is a brat_.

Three years she had been avoiding the Targaryens. Three years of unconsciously taking long routes to classes, of choosing study tables hidden behind corners, of making sure all the tallest students were between her and them in the Great Hall so she wouldn’t even have to see them if she accidentally glanced their way.

She was so adept at it she almost turned around as soon as she entered the Hog’s Head a few weeks ago when she saw them sitting at Harry Potter’s secret meeting table. But Ginny and Luna were on either side of her both talking so excitedly about joining the new Defense Against the Dark Arts club and Sansa really did want to actually learn something this year.

Besides, she was being silly and close-minded, judging them for something they hadn't really had anything to do with. So she’d joined the table, smiled at them both the same as she did everyone else at the table, and vowed to not judge people by their parents (or brothers). It had gone well for everyone.

Aegon was a seventh year, and Head Boy to boot, so he knew even more spells than Harry Potter and volunteered to teach some lessons for "Dumbledore's Army." Daenerys was great at keeping everyone on task and recruiting even more students to the DA. Sansa felt like she was growing as a person for interacting with them.

Then Aegon overheard Sansa mention her Solstice plans to Jeyne Poole.

“My older brothers might not there this year,” she had said. “They want to sail to the Iron Islands with their friend Theon. I wish I could be there to smack them both for even thinking of not spending the holiday with the family, so I told Arya she had to do it for me.”

“Knowing her she probably already has,” Jeyne had said giggling. “Robb and Jon won’t be very useful on their friend’s boat with their eyes swollen shut.”

“I thought you only had one older brother, Sansa.” Aegon had said, ignoring whatever conversation he had been having with Harry and Ron a few feet away.

It was the first time they’d ever spoken directly to each other.

She hated him instantly.

“You must have me confused with someone else,” she’d said with her eyes narrowed, “I have two older brothers.”

He had narrowed his eyes right back at her.

“I could have sworn I heard that you only had the one. And then a _cousin_ who lives with you too.”

“I think I know my family a bit better than you do.”

That had apparently been a declaration of war, because suddenly she couldn’t mention a single thing about her family before Aegon would appear out of the shadows to mention _his_ family and _his brother_ who he was _so close with_ he’d say _like twins_ he’d say. And then Daenerys would join in saying _oh if only they got to see him more often_.

Sansa was once forced to overhear them tell one of Aegon’s classmates about the many “fun” vacations their whole family used to take as children, and what a wonderful doting father they had. She thought she might tear her hair out.

Instead she’d stormed up to the rookery to write Jon about how much she hated his other family. She had ranted for nearly two feet, longer than her last Transfiguration homework that was for sure, before she realized she hadn’t even started with a proper greeting. She thought about not sending it or rewriting it but knew that Jon wouldn’t mind.

She’d tempered some of the anger out of the letter by closing it with a sincere, _I miss you terribly. I wish we could be together, but I care about you too much to wish you were here._

It was less than a week later before she got a reply.

 _I’m so sorry_ , Jon had started with _, for both you having to put up with them and for feeling the slightest bit of schadenfreude that finally it’s someone else and not me._

-

Father had always shielded everyone in the family from the custody battle for Jon, so much that she hadn’t known it existed until its very last day.

When Jon was very young he went on visitation days with his biological dad ( _family day trips_ according to Aegon). He’d leave for the weekend or sometimes even a full week and Robb would turn to Sansa to be his constant companion. She had loved that feeling of finally being one of the big kids and having someone who always wanted to be around her. She’d had hopes that she and Arya would be as close as Jon and Robb, but when Arya finally stopped being just a baby and grew a personality it was obvious to everyone that wouldn’t happen. So being Robb’s Jon for even a short time was a dream come true for young Sansa.

One day when she was six, Jon was getting ready to leave when Sansa decided that being a big kid meant taking charge sometimes.

“Can Robb go away this time?” she’d asked, “We’ve already played all the games we can think of. I want time with just Jon.”

Robb had pouted while her parents smiled fondly. But Jon, nine years old and far past his own tantrum phase, had begun sobbing. He’d cried and he’d screamed and he’d started kicking everything he could get his feet on.

“I hate my dad!” he’d screamed. It had confused little Sansa because he was clutching her father at the time, holding on to him for dear life. She knew in some distant part of her young mind that Jon called their dad Uncle Ned instead of Father, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t Jon’s dad right?

“Don’t make me go! I don’t want to go!”

Even years later when Rickon proved to be the rowdiest child in the family, Jon’s tantrum that day was still the most impressive one Sansa had ever seen. It woke up toddler Bran in his nursery and got little Arya worked into a tizzy. Mother had been beside herself, in the sickest stage of pregnancy and trying to calm down three screaming children. Sansa had wanted to start crying as well but Robb was being a calm supportive big brother so Sansa had to be the calm supportive big sister.

The sobbing went on for over an hour, so loud Father and Mother didn’t hear their phones go off or the knock on the door or even the doorbell itself.

Rhaegar Targaryen had to let himself into the house. Jon had only just begun to calm down when his biological father stepped into the living room, but as soon as he saw him Jon started to go even wilder. He threw anything he could at the tall blond man while he ran to hide under the couch.

Rhaegar had tried to grab Jon’s arm and pull him to the car waiting outside but that made Jon scream even louder and Mother had come waddling up with a crying baby curled around her huge pregnant belly to yell at the man to unhand her nephew right that instant.

Mother and Father and Rhaegar argued loud enough to overpower the screaming children and in the end Jon got to stay home that weekend and every weekend after that.

It was the only time Sansa had ever seen Jon’s dad, and there was a part of her that was very happy she could really only picture the man with a pudding cup in his hair.

-

Writing to Jon revealed a lot more to Sansa about that particular family scandal than she had ever been aware of. She shared that memory with him, and he shared that he’d still ended up having to visit to Rhaegar and Aegon regularly, just never overnight and they had to be accompanied by another Stark, most often Uncle Benjen. 

Once Jon hit Hogwarts age Rhaegar had seemed to focus on making sure his children bonded with each other, especially since Jon wasn’t _going_ to Hogwarts. So Jon and Aegon and their aunt-who-was-younger-than-them Daenerys would have play dates without Rhaegar present. Jon said he liked them both much more without the pressure of their dad trying to force a strong bond, but he liked it far more whenever Rhaenys deigned to join them.

Aegon bounced back and forth between his mother and father’s custody, but his older sister Rhaenys had chosen to cut Rhaegar out of her life as soon as she was old enough (it made her somewhat of a hero to Jon, he wrote). The loss of her from the Targaryen Family Weekends was one of the reasons Jon had reacted so violently on Pudding Cup Day. How funny, Sansa had thought reading one of Jon’s letters, that Rhaegar really was the thing that bonded Jon to his half-sister, even if it wasn’t the way the older man probably wanted.

-

When Sansa made it home for Solstice, welcomed outside the train station by a loving Sanswich from her big brothers (both sporting black eyes, she noted fondly) she decided to finally find the answer to the question she’d never realized she had.

She waited until they got home, choosing one of the rare moments when neither were surrounded by other siblings, and then cornered Jon in his room.

“Jon, why didn’t you go to Hogwarts?”

Sitting at his desk with books strewn all around, Sansa could just picture Jon in the Hogwarts library. She thought he’d like it. Robb’s favorite subjects were History and Potions, and he’d mention more than once that Hogwarts would have ruined those passions for him with how often Sansa complained of boring old Professor Binns and often cruel Professor Snape. But Jon liked Charms and Transfiguration and Sansa thought he would get along marvelously with Professor's Flitwick and McGonagall.

“Because I’ve already been there,” Jon answered.

“When?”

“Well,” Jon closed his book and looked at her more fully, “I was born there.”

She had known that of course, but it was strange to hear it said out loud as a reason to not go back.

“That doesn’t mean you couldn’t be a student,” Sansa said carefully. Jon didn’t respond for a moment, which was very typical of Jon so she tried not to push him too far.

“Rhaegar took me there once when I still had to visit with him on weekends. It was...strange. I guess a lot of the students went to Old Town for the day, but the ones still around gave us all these odd looks. I felt like some sideshow exhibit on display. The professors, though, they were all overjoyed. They chatted about missing him, about wishing he could come back to teach again and they stared at me too and said I looked just like my mother. Then we went on this tour, not just of the school but of each classroom that held special importance to him.

“Even as a kid I was confused by how casual he was about it all,” Jon shook his head. “He’d say, ‘This is the classroom I met your mother in,’ and, ‘This used to be my office, it was where we kissed for the first time.’ He even took me to the Gryffindor dorms to show me where Mother grew up. He ended by taking me to the hospital wing and I just couldn’t handle it. She died in that room and it was just a stop on the tour of their grand romance to him.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but do you realize how rare witches dying in childbirth is? There are just so many spells and potions… Seven hells, _muggles_ rarely die in childbirth any more. But she’d been transfiguring herself to hide that she was pregnant at all and the nurse at Hogwarts wasn’t prepared and I came too early and she was so _young_. She died. She died, and he just showed me the room where it happened like it was nothing. She _died_ and the worst that happened to him was he was forced to quit, but they let him wait until the end of the year and kept all the reasons quiet. She _died_ and he got to come back to give me a tour of her _dorms_!

“When I got the invitation letter I, ha,” Jon laughed, but it wasn’t happy. Sansa sat down on the ground by his feet, looking up at him like he was reading her the most morbid storybook in the world. “You can ask Robb about this but when we got those invitations I tried to chase the raven away. I was like smacking the poor bird around and stepping on the furniture trying to get it out of the house. I failed obviously and when the stupid letter was finally in my hand I just started ripping as fast as I could. I ripped until I was just scratching at my fingers.

“Robb finally stopped me by reading allowed as he wrote my declination letter for me. Then he wrote his own and it was just like breathing easily for the first time in years. I hadn’t realized how terrified I was of going, but I was.

“And I’m so happy for you, Sansa, really I am. I’m happy you’re happy, I’m happy you’re learning and making friends and feel like you fit in and I’m happy you’re growing up so well there. But honestly? I’m sort of terrified for you, too. You’re the first Stark to go there since Uncle Benjen dropped out. And after last year and everything going on now with, with _Voldemort_ …I think you’re so incredibly brave, but I’m so incredibly scared for you.”

Sansa had never thought of going to Hogwarts as a particularly brave thing to do, and now she felt rather silly for it. Sansa was almost as old as her Aunt Lyanna was when she met then-Professor Targaryen. Sansa was almost as old as her Aunt Lyanna was when she died.

She was exactly as old as Uncle Benjen was when his sister hid her pregnancy from him. She was exactly as old as Uncle Benjen was when he watched his sister die in the school they both went to. Exactly as old as Uncle Benjen was when he was told he’d have to finish the year being taught by the man who as good as killed her.

And Jon. Jon was older now than his mother ever got to be.

Sansa and Jon hugged for a long time on the floor of his room. They only broke apart when Robb came storming in covered in snow and mud from whatever game he was playing with Arya and Rickon outside. He saw them on the ground and joined in immediately, getting them both wet and filthy and they’d all raced to see who could get to the big bathroom first, then when Jon won she and Robb raced to the smaller one, and when she won she heard Robb stomp like a child to use one of the guest baths on the other side of the house.

-

Sansa thought after hearing the full story from Jon she’d be afraid to go back to Hogwarts. But it was still her home away from home, the place she had made hers through years of living and studying and loving.

She thought when she saw Aegon and Daenerys Targaryen again after break she’d feel even angrier at them for passive aggressively trying to steal her brother away from her, but instead she realized she felt so sad for them. Rhaenys Martell had decided to cut off ties with her father and officially change her name, but Aegon hadn’t. Aegon was too young to realize how hurt his mother had been when Jon was born and Lyanna Stark had died, too young to want to cut his father out of his life for something he probably considered ancient history. And Daenerys, poor Daenerys had even less choice in the matter. Rhaegar was her brother and with their parents dead and their other brother in Azkaban she didn’t have a second family like Jon and Rhaenys did to use to get away from him.

So Sansa let them tell their friends about their brother who was kept away from them by his mother’s mean nasty family. She let them make subtle jabs about her brother-who-was-technically-her-cousin and she halfway hoped they’d stop being subtle about it and try to honestly confront her on supposedly lying to everyone about having four brothers instead of three brothers and a cousin.

She didn’t really think her family’s past was anyone’s business, but none of them were ashamed of where they came from, and Aunt Lyanna’s death was hardly the only tragedy they’d faced, Jon’s birth not the only scandal.

After Bran was bit, their father started using a saying he'd heard his grandparents use ages ago: When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives.

The Starks were a pack. Only one of them might have been a wolf now, but they were still a pack, still a family, and nothing would tear them apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The adaptation of the Rhaegar and Lyanna story was actually one of the first things I thought of when I started this project. Lyanna's age and the power imbalance of their "relationship" is something I'm very very critical of, so using the teacher/student dynamic was one of the cornerstones of this story's Stark family backstory. You might have noticed that last chapter revealed that Robb was biologically the child of Brandon and Catelyn rather than Catelyn and Ned, and that was a liberty I took to preserve the squickiness of Rhaegar and Lyanna - to keep her the same age AND keep Jon and Robb the same age.
> 
> That change led to some other plot points to do with Catelyn that might be covered in later chapters, if this continues


	7. 4th Year, pt II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa joins Harry's fight against Voldemort and pays a price.

Sansa never thought she'd see Jon on platform 9 ¾ his distaste for Hogwarts was so great, so she really should be forgiven for her confusion when she saw him in the castle proper.

Not just the castle, though, she realized looking around where she was, but the _hospital wing_.

Therefore, to the part of her brain that was all logic without much reason, she wasn’t actually seeing Jon. And if she wasn’t actually seeing Jon, she also wasn’t seeing Robb and Arya and Bran and Rickon and Mother and Father. But she was certainly _feeling_ them, as her sore ribs could attest as the thing-that-might-have-been-Rickon-if-it-was-impossible-for-Rickon-to-be-here struggled to hug her in her hospital bed.

The other option was that she wasn’t actually at Hogwarts. Of course. Her family were all beside her because she was at home or St. Mungo’s and was simply imagining it all looked and smelled exactly like the Hogwarts hospital wing.

But wait that was Madame Pomfrey behind Jon’s back, and that image alone made her headache hurt all the more. Oh she had a headache, she hadn’t actually noticed before which was strange because it felt like her head was split in two. 

“Ow.” 

“Oh sweetling,” her mother cried. With real tears in her eyes. When was the last time Sansa saw her mother cry? Had she ever? No yes she had when Bran had been found outside the castle halls, but only those first terrifying moments and never after, even when the doctors told him he’d never walk again. What had happened? Who had died? 

“What’s wrong, Mother?”

Her mother, still crying, laughed then.

“Only you, my sweet girl, could worry about someone else after being hexed into a coma.” 

She had been hexed?

Oh yes. Of course she had been hexed. She and Jeyne Poole and Colin Creevy and the Targaryens and all the rest of the DA had fought off Umbridge and her Inquisitor Squad while Harry Potter led a charge to save his godfather at the Ministry of Magic. 

She’d heard spells being cast she’d only read about in footnotes in the darkest tomes in Winterfell’s library, then others she’d never even heard of at all. She’d been dueling one-on-one with Lancel Lannister when she’d suddenly felt pain explode on her back, ruining her concentration on her shield charm just as Lancel’s curse came flying at her.

“Did Harry find his godfather?” she mumbled. That was important. That was why they had done all of this. Ginny had come running for help so Harry could save his godfather. Sansa didn’t know anything about the man, but Harry said he was all he had left and Voldemort had him. She didn’t need to know anything more than that, just offered to distract Umbridge and her goons so Harry could get away with Ginny and Luna and Ron and Hermione and Neville.

“Yes, sweetling,” Father said, “Harry found his godfather. They’re talking just outside. Do you want me to fetch them?” He pointed to the far end of the hospital wing, but it hurt Sansa’s neck too much to turn to see so she didn’t bother trying.

Sansa just sighed in relief and closed her eyes.

“No,” she said, “I’m just glad they’re alright. When can I go home?” 

“Tomorrow at the earliest,” Father said, “probably not till the day after though, darling.”

Sansa nodded her head and immediately regretted it when it throbbed painfully. 

“Can you,” she started, but her voice left her. She blindly reached to where she hoped there was water waiting for her but Mother beat her to the punch and held a glass up to her mouth while she drank.

“I want to go home,” Sansa said when she was finished, “Can you talk to Madame Pomfrey to let me out earlier?” 

Mother sat at Sansa’s side.

“I’m sure we can figure something out.” Mother looked toward Father pointedly, “You talk to the nurse, Ned. Sweetling, can you tell me where your dorm is? I can go pack up all your stuff so when you’re released we can all go straight home.” 

“Jeyne,” Sansa said, “Jeyne can take you there. Where is Jeyne?” 

“I think I saw her out in the hall with everyone else,” Arya said quietly. “Madame Pomfrey said students weren’t allowed in just yet, only family.” 

“Great, great. I’ll go ask her. Arya do you want to come with me?” 

Arya kicked her feet nervously and shook her head. Mother kissed Sansa on the top of her head and left the room. Sansa could see a large group of people out there, including Harry Potter laughing next to an older man she didn’t recognize. She didn’t see Jeyne, but Mother didn’t come back in the room so she must have found her or someone else who could let her into the Hufflepuff dorms. 

Sansa looked imploringly at her father, who still hadn’t left to talk to Madame Pomfrey. 

“She’s over there, Uncle Ned,” Jon said, pointing to Madame Pomfrey on the other side of the room tending to one of her other patients. Sansa belatedly realized there were a few other students in beds. DA and Inquisitor Squad member both, with other parents and siblings by their bedsides. 

Father sighed as all of his children stared at him. 

“Alright, I’ll see if I can talk her into letting you out tonight.” 

Sansa smiled and closed her eyes to relax back into her pillow. 

She opened them when she felt something hit her shoulder. Robb and lifted Bran from his chair and sat him instead on the windowsill above Sansa’s head, his feet resting on either side of her head. 

“What are you doing?” She asked, but didn’t get an answer before Robb crawled onto her bed on her left side, Jon doing the same on her right. They had both grown so tall and broad that they each only had one leg on the bed while the other braced themselves on the floor. 

“Hey the bed might break with your weight, get off.” 

They didn’t get off of course, but were instead joined by Arya crawling to lay overtop their legs while Rickon leaped to sprawl over everyone, resting his head on Robb’s shoulder. 

To her left, Robb reached for Bran’s backpack and pulled out a giant stack of comic books from it to hand to him. 

“So there’s this great new story arc,” Bran said, but Sansa couldn’t crane her neck up enough to see him. “It’ll be perfect for beginning readers. And you’ll all love it I promise, it’s about this team out in space and they fight some aliens and help other aliens and they’re this cool tight nit found family. We can all read as a character! I want to be Starlord, Arya you can be Gamora…” 

Bran didn’t pause in his explanation, and soon enough they all had a character to voice as they read the books together. Father came back after two issues to say that Sansa could leave first thing in the morning and they all cheered so loudly Madame Pomfrey came over to threaten to change her mind. 

Father left to go help Mother and the kids continued reading, this time with occasional requests from some of the other patients to speak up so they could hear what was happening, or to shut up altogether. Ron Weasley snuck out of his bed to lie in the one next to the Starks so he could sneak a peek at the pictures. 

They’d nearly gotten to the bottom of the pile of comics when the students outside started coming in and dispersed around to visit their friends in different beds. 

Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ginny started running toward where Ron had last been lying but turned at the last minute when they realized he wasn’t there anymore. They approached his new bed more cautiously, and Sansa knew she and her siblings made quite the picture. 

“Hi, Ginny,” she said buried underneath too many gangly limbs, “Hi, Hermione, Harry. Want to meet my family?” 

“Oh let me guess!” Ginny stepped forward. “You’re Bran,” she said pointing to Rickon, “You’re Jon and Robb,” she said pointing to Robb and Jon in the wrong order, “Rickon,” to Bran, “and Arya.” 

“Well you’re partially right,” Sansa said smiling. “I mean you switched up Robb and Jon, and also Rickon and Bran. But you got Arya right.” 

Harry and Hermione laughed and came closer to sit on the side of Ron’s bed. 

“I heard you found your godfather,” Sansa said to Harry, and he smiled brightly at her, “What happened? How’d you win?” 

“There wasn’t much a fight, to be honest,” Harry said, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. 

“Aegon sent word to his father before we left to have the Order meet us at the Ministry,” he paused here, “Oh the Order of the—“ 

“We know what the Order of the Phoenix is,” Arya interrupted. 

“Oh, yes well Mr. Targaryen is a member, and Aegon and he have these two-way mirrors. We expected all the members to show up to help us fight, but when we got to the Ministry it was just Mr. Targaryen and Professor Lupin.” 

“But you got your godfather out anyway? With just them?” Bran asked. 

Harry flushed and looked down, “well that’s the thing, I guess. Sirius wasn’t there at all, I was just—I was just tricked into thinking he was.” 

“I’m so glad he’s safe!” Sansa said instead of dwelling too hard on what that meant for her own fight at Hogwarts. 

“Yeah, me too. But well when we got there, there were still Death Eaters waiting to ambush us and they tried to drag us to the Department of Mysteries. So we had that fight which we got out of alright from.” 

“Speak for yourself,” Ron said, but he was smiling so they all knew he was about as mad at the false pretenses surrounding his injuries as Sansa herself was. 

“But now the whole wizarding world knows that Voldemort is back, that’s the important thing. The Ministry can finally start actually fighting him,” Hermione said proudly. 

“Are your parents in the Order?” Ron asked Sansa, but Arya, still laying overtop her older siblings’ legs, was the one to answer. 

“Our Uncle and Grandfather were. Mum’s a muggle, but Father might join this time around now that he doesn’t have a bunch of babies to take care of.” She poked at Jon’s foot and used her own to nudge Robb in the chest to indicate which babies had kept Father from the last war. 

“Our whole family’s joined up too,” Ginny said. “Not just our parents but our older brothers.” She looked at Robb and Jon then, trying to think how old they probably were. 

“Don’t try to recruit for us, Miss Weasley.” 

“Professor Lupin!” Sansa said excitedly. Harry had mentioned that Lupin was at the Ministry, but she hadn’t known he’d come back to the castle with them all. She was glad to see him again. She’d never been a fan of Defense Against the Dark Arts, but the year he’d taught had made her love it. He and the man she saw through the door talking to Harry were walking toward their end of the hospital wing. 

“You’re the werewolf!” Bran exclaimed. All of her siblings perked up at that, even as the man walking next to Professor Lupin stopped dead and began glaring at them all as much as Harry was from his seat on Ron’s bed 

“You must be Bran.” Lupin smiled widely at Bran, who beamed back. 

It seemed like everyone in the whole hospital wing was looking at Bran, who flushed bright red. Jon put a comforting hand on his knee. 

“Well it’s nice to meet you, I’ve heard wonderful things,” Lupin said, drawing nearer and shaking her brother’s hand. 

“Bran, are you…” Ron trailed off with a grunt, Ginny looking far too determinedly away from him to have not have made him quiet. 

“We’ve loads of werewolves in our family,” Rickon said brightly. “Jon Stark that built the Wolf’s Den, obviously him, and his son Rickard too! And they say Osric Stark was born a werewolf. Bran the Builder was a werewolf and he built Winterfell and the Wall and even Storm’s End. And—“ 

“It was a different Bran,” Bran said, still red and hiding his face from the staring students on Ron’s bed. “I mean _I’m_ a different Bran than the Bran that built the Wall.” 

“I was going to say you had to tell me your secret for looking so young for your age,” Lupin’s friend said. 

“Oh!” Harry exclaimed, “This is my godfather, Sirius.” 

Sirius Black, famed mass murderer, smiled at them all and held his hand out to shake. Rickon did so first, of course, Arya quick to follow. 

“I’ve heard terrible things, but I’ll go ahead and assume they’re wrong,” Jon said when it was his turn. Sirius smiled and Lupin snickered. 

“He’s not the Jon Stark that built the Wolf’s Den, by the way,” Rickon said smiling and flipping through Bran’s comic books. 

“Yes thank you, Rickon,” Robb said with a sigh, “I think they figured that out.” 

“You’re welcome.” 

All the older kids laughed at young Rickon but he didn’t seem to notice. 

“We wanted to thank you, Sansa. You and all the other students who stood behind Harry, it was very brave,” Sirius said to her. 

“Thank you Mr. Black,” Sansa said smiling. “Actually I’m a bit glad that it was kind of unnecessary.” She shot a quick look to Jon before finishing, “Good thing Aegon and his father have two-way mirrors.”

“Wait, is that how Aegon got news to Rhaegar so quickly?” Sirius asked the room. 

“Yeah, they’re more common than you think Sirius you and James weren’t the only ones in the world who had them,” Lupin said still smiling.

“My dad had a two-way mirror?” Harry asked. 

Sirius gave Harry an incredulous look. 

“Yes, yes he did and you’d’ve known that if you’d opened your Christmas present.” 

Harry flushed as red as Ron’s hair. 

“I feel so betrayed right now,” Sirius said to Lupin in a faux-whisper. 

The lights suddenly dimmed and Madame Pomfrey said that visitors needed to get out so her patients could get some rest for the night. 

“Where are you all going to stay tonight?” Sansa asked her siblings. Mother and Father weren’t back yet, she hoped they didn’t have to wander around too long to find them. Harry, Hermione, and Ginny were saying goodbye to Ron next to them but they were all Gryffindor’s and probably wouldn’t know where the Hufflepuff dorms were to help find her parents. Professor Lupin was still here though, he could lead them… 

“Do any of you play quidditch?” Ginny asked, interrupting Sansa’s thoughts. 

“A bit,” Bran said, and he was the only one in the family who favored quidditch over muggle sports. But he just liked flying in general. 

“It’s still early, and Harry and I were thinking of a friendly game as a ‘So Glad No One Died’ celebration. You can all crash in the Gryffindor dorms when we’re done if your parents are okay with it.” 

“Sounds like fun!” Bran said, and looked toward Robb and Jon for permission. At the same time Arya made a faint “eugh” sound. 

Jon and Robb looked to Sansa then each other then back again, and Sansa hoped she was silently communicating in a way they’d understand. She knew they were all the same page when Jon let out an obviously fake yawn.

“Our parents got a hotel room in Old Town for the night and I’m pooped, so I’ll be going back. But I’ll tell them where you all are if you want to stay here.”

“That sounds like such a wonderful plan, Jon,” Robb said. “And I’d love to play with you guys. Come on, Bran, let’s let Sansa sleep.”

“I want to stay in the castle!” Rickon said standing on Sansa’s bed. Jon plucked him easily up in his arms and held him like an empty sack while Robb helped Bran back into his chair.

“Too bad, squirt. Let’s go.” Arya trailed after Jon while Harry and Ginny led Robb and Bran to out of the room and to the quidditch pitch.

“Your family seems nice,” Ron yawned.

“They are,” she said as she closed her eyes. “I’m glad they get along with our friends.”

“Well our friends are awesome,” Ron said, “so who wouldn’t love them.”

Sansa laughed lightly as she settled into her pillow. She was tired enough she’d be asleep in moments, she knew, and when she woke up she’d be able to go home again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long over due addition. It's been sitting in my drafts waiting for me to write the lead in fight or at least the DA meeting where everyone talks about the upcoming fight, but after much deliberation I decided it didn't need it. So it stands mostly on its own.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a mostly linear series of drabbles all within the same universe. It's quite honestly an exploration of thoroughly mixing two very distinct universes into one without letting one overpower the other. Feedback is appreciated, and requests about what to see next are encouraged 
> 
> I of course own neither Harry Potter nor ASoIaF


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